


funeral pyre

by bog_slug



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Abandonment Issues, Angst, Azula (Avatar) Redemption, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, Child Abuse, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Gen, Heavy Angst, Mental Health Issues, Ozai (Avatar) Being a Terrible Parent, Physical Abuse, Relationship Study, Self-Harm, Self-Worth Issues, Ursa (Avatar) Being a Slightly Less but Still Pretty Bad Parent, like. beta skimmed, semi beta read, sort of??, vent fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-05
Updated: 2021-03-05
Packaged: 2021-03-18 07:15:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,118
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29854497
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bog_slug/pseuds/bog_slug
Summary: a nauseating sort of shame and guilt curled in her stomach, coiling around her lungs and stealing the breath from her throat. it burned, scorched up her neck and down her back, sparking through her fingertips and roiling in her stomach like a forest fire, ripping through her ribcage and settling there like a sleeping dragon, smoke and embers on the backs of her eyelids.she choked it down, let it simmer in her veins, and grinned because princess azula, dragon reborn, was above such thoughts.her suffering was not profound. it was not meaningful.her foot pressed harder into his throat.she would make sure no one else’s was, either.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 38





	funeral pyre

**Author's Note:**

> just a repeat from the tags: there is self harm in this fic!! it's not graphic and there's no knives/blood, but be warned if this is something you need to be careful of
> 
> i relate too much with azula to not have written this, it was only a matter of time yall
> 
> look man... sometimes we just need to project on fictional characters

“mother, look!” she cheered, cupping a flickering flame in her hands, soft and sweet as the plum blossoms floating in the pond. “look what i can do!”

her mother cast her eyes towards her, giving her barely a moment of attention before turning her face back towards the turtle ducks. zuko blinked up at his mother curiously.

“hmm,” her mother hummed. “that’s nice.”

zuko’s wide eyes turned towards azula’s palms, and azula could see the licks of fire in the reflection of his awe-filled eyes.

“amazing, sister!”

“my name is azula, not sister,” she growled, spitting out the last word as if it were hot coals on her tongue. flames once warm and contained flared outwards, growing hotter and hotter. zuko cowered back. _idiot_ , she sneered to herself. _coward_.

“stop that!” her mother exclaimed, returning her reprimanding gaze onto azula. “can’t you see you’re scaring him? come, zuko, do not be afraid. i will always protect you.”

azula clenched her jaw, feeling shame and anger lance through her heart like lightning. _protect him? from her? she wasn’t going to hurt him. he wouldn’t have been in danger if she just pretended to care anyway. it wasn’t her fault._ she bit her lip harshly to keep it from trembling. she was better than that. stronger than that. _why did she always assume the worst of azula? it wasn’t fair. she hadn’t even done anything._

“fine,” she forced out, before vindictively adding “i’m sure father will be happy to hear how zuko’s supposed ‘training’ with his mother is going.”

her mother (zuko’s mother, she corrected herself. zuko’s, but not hers. she had made that clear.) pressed her lips together, eyes wrinkling in irritation. “you are your father’s daughter, truly,” and though azula had heard those words a thousand times from a thousand of her father’s ministers and courtiers and attendants, this was the first time those words had sounded so cruel and demeaning.

azula tamped down the hot tears threatening to form in her eyes, heating them with the fires of her anger and boiling them away.

-

azula’s kindest memories of her mother were opaque, curled at the edges, like parchment held over flame. early in her life, certainly. it wasn’t long before ursa did not care for her once zuko was there, regardless of how hard she worked for her approval. her lips curled bitterly at the thought.

a soft kiss on her forehead, a comforting sweep of a thumb across her shoulder blade, and fine-toothed comb running through her hair. once a hearth, these memories were now a brand against her soul (not truly hers, she sometimes felt, life beating at the edge of her consciousness like the wings of a dragon), reminding her of times long past and affections now unattainable.

her father always knew when she wept, always made her regret it. she felt a ghost of slim fingers under her eyes, wiping away smudges of dirt, smiling lips against a skinned knee.

she would not cry, would not allow herself this night of fragility. she had taken too many already.

-

“yes, father.”

“as you wish, father.”

“it would be my pleasure, father.”

and perhaps if she had called him father one last time, he would have remembered it the next time she knelt before him, shadowed form flickering in blurry eyes and sparking hand raised to strike.

the flames behind him looked almost like her funeral pyre, curling into the dark sky and savagely eating what was left of her.

-

a minister had told her, once, that a fire nation citizen had chosen to live before they had been born. bodiless, floating in the spirit world, they join the living to promote the message of fire lord ozai. this choice was what gave them their fire, a gift from the spirits in order to better serve her father, and she must have had an even more powerful will to serve because of her proficiency in firebending.

“how noble,” he had praised her. “to devote yourself so wholly to his cause before you even existed.”

she had smirked and lifted her chin proudly at the time, but inwardly she felt the fire in her veins sear her skin, thin trails of smoke wisping up her spinal column and burning like tears in her throat.

was this truly what she was meant to be?

was this all she was?

flames blazed up the back of her neck, prickling across her shoulders and driving itself to fever pitch as the minister patted her shoulder in admiration.

had she truly chosen this life?

was it her own fault?

she swallowed thickly past the embers in her lungs, stoked with every breath as they flickered under the bellows of her forced even breaths.

it was all her fault.

she had done this to herself.

she would see it through, as punishment.

may she be wiser in her next lifetime.

-

the knowledge that she was named after her grandfather did not bring her the joy and pride her father claimed it did.

her name was a political advancement for him, her skills no longer a development to be pleased with but a demand to meet the expectations of her grandfather in order to bring further honor to their shared name.

her name was not her own, her soul did not feel her own. who was she if not a terrible amalgamation of the expectations of her father and a failure to be good enough as herself?

her mother stared absently ahead, uninterested in her performance for her grandfather. azula extinguished the sparks of hurt that sizzled in her chest, allowing her attention to be completely drawn into her firebending.

her mother’s words from just a few minutes prior echoed in her mind. _what is wrong with that child?_ her voice like bitter smoke, a mixture of poorly concealed disgust and cruel dismissal.

her brother’s failure was met with her mother’s praise.

_what is wrong with that child?_

she had worked so hard to please them.

_what is wrong with that child?_

why was she never good enough?

her father only ever praised her when she was perfect. so she was always perfect. a thousand thousand sleepless nights spent learning military tactics flickered in her mind like a film reel, tears burning behind her eyes but never to be released. crying was weakness. weakness was imperfection. she was perfect. she could not cry.

she wished she was good enough.

-

“not good enough,” a voice tutted as she was thrown once more onto the ground, winded from her stomach slamming into the dirt. her father’s shoes entered her vision, gilt and flickering in the lighting of the courtyard, her father’s form blocking most of the light. she could hear her trainer shifting anxiously behind her.

“my lord, perhaps —”

“silence,” he demanded, and the trainer leapt back as if he had been burned and slapped both hands over his mouth to physically prevent himself from speaking.

“this is the best you can do?” he placed his foot on her neck, the light pressure enough to send her squirming.

“enough, insect.”

she stilled immediately.

“pathetic.”

her eyes felt hot and itchy, dust sinking itself under her eyelids like hot coals.

“father, i will do better. please, let me —”

“do not speak to me.” he put more weight on his foot, scoffing out a laugh as she choked. she dared not move, though she saw black spots flickering in her vision like charred wood flaking off and rising in a bonfire. “you will be better, or you will die under me like the beast you are.”

she flailed, writhing underneath him, not willing to bend fire and risk hurting herself or her father. he pressed his foot further into her neck. she gasped for breath, wheezing, clawing at his ankle in the hopes of pushing him off.

she would not succeed.

the spots in her eyes grew larger, blending with her reflexive tears and rendering her effectively blind. her father was speaking, perhaps with her trainer, but the pounding of war drums in her ears was too loud for her to understand what he was saying. perhaps she didn’t deserve to know.

her grip around his ankle grew loose, and the tears in her eyes were no longer just from a lack of oxygen.

she would suffocate, here, in her father’s shadow, forgotten and truly alone.

her father did not love her. her mother did not love her. she was well and truly by herself, and that was perhaps the cruelest way to die. she wept silently for her failures, for the dragon whose soul she had stolen, for the grandfather whose name she had been forcefully given, for her bastard self who had willed her into existence to serve fire lord ozai.

the sweeping flames of sorrow blazed deep within her bones, starting in her throat and sinking into her ribcage, soothing her wildly beating heart and eating away her misery. through her blurry vision she saw a burst of blue, bitter and desolate as the fire in her marrow, and suddenly the pressure on her neck had lifted.

she surged upward, coughing, raising a trembling hand to massage the constricted muscles of her neck as she scrambled to get away from her father. a hand in her hair prevented her from putting distance between them, dragging her up with its grip and forcing her to look up at him. He was smirking, wickedly pleased with a deadly sort of satisfaction that made her heart sink.

“blue flames,” he mused, tightening his grip on her hair. “fascinating.”

he dropped her to the ground, watching her collapse back into the dirt and curl up in self-defense.

“well done,” he praised, and azula hated herself for the flicker of pleasure that slipped between her ribs and warmed her chest.

“next time, if you dare to shed a tear in my presence, you will not live to see the consequences. you are done here,” he waved to her trainer, who stepped back and forth in place like an anxious horse. “she will see you tomorrow. get out of my sight.”

she stayed back long after they both had left, after her father scrubbed his shoe on the ground as if to rid himself of her presence, after her trainer murmured condolences and placed a healing salve next to her on the ground before scurrying away. she kneeled on the ground, one hand placed around the ring of bruises around her neck as if to soothe away the burn deep in her throat, one hand held before her and lit with a softly flickering blue flame.

she did not cry that night, nor any night after.

-

perfect combustion, her father’s researchers called it.

a flame so precisely balanced it did not produce soot or byproducts.

the priests called it the will of the spirits, the mark of the dragon.

she did not know which she hated more.

-

zuko’s agni kai was a spectacle she could not afford to tear her eyes from.

_what good is your precious mother’s favor now, brother?_

a part of her was pleased, heating her stomach in sickly waves of warmth. that was not her. she was a loyal daughter. she had not failed. she was better. she was worthy of praise. she would not be subjected to the wrath of her father (not in such a public way, perhaps, memories of molten whips and hands raised to strike burning through her mind before she snuffed it out).

the other part saw herself cowering where zuko was on the stage, and the flashes between her brother and herself were so terrifying she could not bear to rip her eyes away, searing this moment into her memory.

her father’s gaze landed on her as zuko writhed on the floor in agony, the smell of charred flesh billowing towards her, as if it were intended as a warning. she swallowed back the bile that burned her throat and smirked at zuko’s body, weakly twitching as he begged for mercy. she could not bear to meet her father’s eyes.

the waves of heat from the braziers, gossamer and spitting with embers, distorted his prone body. suddenly she could not tell if she was seeing zuko or herself crawling desperately at her father’s feet. she did not think she wanted to know.

(please, father, forgive me, i’ll do better, i’ll be better, i will earn the title of your daughter, please —)

through the smoke and ash, her terror almost looked like satisfaction.

-

azula stood at a dais upon an elevated platform before thousands of people, the population of the fire nation capital and all those who had braved the travel to witness her, bracketed on all sides by fire nation soldiers, staring blankly forth with white masks like skulls. at her sides stood the sages, smiling wickedly down at the crowd and drumming their fingers patiently upon the surface of the dais, stone carved with dragons mid-flight seeming to ripple beneath their fingertips.

she shuddered slightly at the thought. lo narrowed her eyes at the display of weakness, hissing out a disappointed sigh.

“control yourself,” she demanded quietly as li let out a soft _tsk_ , unheard over the murmur of the fire nation. “everyone is watching. fire lord ozai will be most displeased with your performance if you continue to act in a manner unbecoming of a dragon reborn.”

she gritted her teeth and swallowed, tasting bitter ash. a dragon reborn. whatever that entailed. her father’s growing violence and lack of regard for the spirits had gone excused in much of the capital, but many of the rural villages on the outskirts of the fire nation still revered their power (alleged, if her father was to be believed. she didn’t know anymore. she didn’t know if she ever knew.) and growing dissent had led her father to this. to call her a spirit born again.

dragons were extinct, had been since her great-grandfather decimated them. to call her a dragon, an original firebender, borne into the form of a human was blasphemy, a disrespect to the spirits; her father called it an opportunity to secure the loyalty of the peasant villages.

her father demanded this of her. she bowed to his will, as was her lot.

her eyes steeled, sparking and flinty. li nodded approvingly and stepped forward in tandem with lo. the crowd was silenced immediately.

“noble citizens of the fire nation,” li began, “we thank you for journeying from your homes to join us.”

 _noble_ , azula scoffed to herself. they were anything but.

“we stand before you with excellent news, delivered from fire lord ozai himself.” lo tilted her head towards azula. the crowd shifted, but dared not speak.

“as you know, lady azula is his finest pupil.”

“she has advanced at a rate unseen in any other firebender before her, with the exception of the fire lord himself.”

heat flashed under her eyelids briefly, flickering before her pupils and showing her hours, days, weeks of slaving away, working herself to the bone and then working harder in order to impress the only parent that would grace her with attention, young hands raw and blistered from the heat and tears scorching down her cheeks —

no. that had not happened. she did not have to work for her excellence, it had been handed to her by the spirits. and even with this gracious gift, she could not even think to stand in her father’s shadow.

“the dragons, long extinct, have risen once more to aid fire lord ozai in his noble quest.”

“though they no longer take their original form, they have answered the call of the fire nation in the form of the fire lord’s own daughter!”

“praise be to lady azula, the dragon reborn!”

li and lo stepped back, allowing the crowd to behold azula as she opened her arms wide before them. blue flames flickered in her palms, almost comforting in their icy heat. the crowd roared, stamping the ground and jostling each other in their fervor.

 _like cattle_ , she thought distantly. the idea made her almost sick, (how easy to slaughter, little turtle ducks floating in a pond, waiting for her beastly, flashing hand to reach down and grab their necks —) flicking her eyes back to the dais to center herself.

if she looked closely, the dragons carved into it almost looked as though they were running away.

she felt sicker at the thought.

-

her mouth was a blaze that turned her words to ash upon her tongue, cracking her lips and charring her throat with thoughts unspoken.

she sank her teeth into the curve of her arm, just below her wrist, and clamped her jaw down. pain lanced through her momentarily, then fizzled out into a heat that spread from the bite into the skin around it. she kept her teeth clenched as long as she could bear it before letting go, pulling back and stroking across the mark with her thumb.

a ring of purple dashes marked out a circle on her arm, skin inside the bite mark tinged with pink. she pressed into the bite on her arm with the nail of her thumb, the pressure bringing an echo of the pain she had felt moments before.

after a few minutes, the purple marks had turned into slightly raised skin, as if it were never there. she pressed into it again and shivered when it smarted.

-

she missed ember island, though she knew admitting it was weak and pathetic and would only lead to hurt because she wasn’t allowed good things, wasn’t allowed happy memories but — but —

there was something exhilarating about using her tactical abilities in such an insignificant way, just a game of kuai, without the loss or destruction or death that made her feel almost… right.

she was reminded of her ember island visits when she and zuko were children, when their relationship wasn’t so sharp and tense, building sandcastles together and eating sweet bean dumplings in the shade of a parasol, emblazoned with the fire nation royal crest.

she could still feel the heat of zuko’s bonfire against her face, see the embers in the darkness of the night as one by one, they made themselves vulnerable.

one by one, except her.

she had stared into the fire pit, bitten her tongue. perfect? her brother thought she was perfect, that her life was _perfect?_

she felt haunted, possessed by a thousand different spirits, swirling around in her blood and twisting around in her bones, stealing away a body that had never truly had a soul of its own.

she thought a parent’s love was unconditional. she thought a mother was supposed to love her children equally. she thought a father was supposed to be proud of his daughter no matter what she did. she thought they were supposed to be kind.

_“my own mother thought i was a monster.”_

she was right, azula knew she was. it still hurt, like wet smoke and hot tar. her brother’s eyes glowed knowingly, reflecting the light of the cinders.

even the flickering remains of that boy’s house (she couldn’t remember his name, it didn’t matter if father didn’t say it did) had given her a pleased spark as they had done it together, as a team.

as a family.

she should have known it wouldn’t last.

-

_“i love zuko more than i fear you.”_

fear? she had been afraid?

azula thought them equals. perhaps she was their leader, but her father demanded as much, and if they did not meet his expectations, she was the one who faced his wrath.

(an image of his silhouette backlit by the braziers in the throne room flickered, just like the flames in his hand, poised to strike. she razed it to the ground, swept away the ashes before it could resurface.)

she gritted her teeth. again, zuko had taken something away from her. again, someone loved zuko more than her. more than they _feared_ her, she corrected herself, though the thought tasted like burnt oil on her tongue.

her lungs tightened, skin feeling too tight over her body, throat constricting and shoulders drawing taut. a hand came up to wrap around her throat, (to massage the bruises, flickers of blue fire in her palm, her father’s voice in her ears,) and something almost like loss echoed in her chest.

she tightened her hand around her throat, keeping hold until the ringing in her ears covered up his voice, and a biting vindictiveness soothed over the hurt like spiced plum wine and clove oil, heating the skin on her neck with a blistering flame and crawling up her cheeks. her eyebrows narrowed.

they thought they knew fear?

they had no idea.

-

the man below her shook, her foot on his throat, begging for his life. for a moment, a tear-hazed memory surfaced, but she let it wither and burn away before she could fully remember it. better to not, she had learned.

he cried beneath her like a beast, pleading for mercy, for his wife and children, for his farm and his business and his stand in the market that would go unattended if he died at her hands today.

a nauseating sort of shame and guilt curled in her stomach, coiling around her lungs and stealing the breath from her throat. it burned, scorched up her neck and down her back, sparking through her fingertips and roiling in her stomach like a forest fire, ripping through her ribcage and settling there like a sleeping dragon, smoke and embers on the backs of her eyelids.

she choked it down, let it simmer in her veins, and grinned because princess azula, dragon reborn, was above such thoughts.

her suffering was not profound. it was not meaningful.

her foot pressed harder into his throat.

she would make sure no one else’s was, either.

-

fire licked across her open palm, dancing down her fingers and shuddering low next to her skin, pleasantly warm. she willed it higher, higher, flickering up to reach eye level.

she reached across it, feeling the waves of heat spreading from the focal point on her inner forearm. the warmth bordered on unpleasant.

she lowered it further, watching her skin turn pinker, distorting slightly behind the translucent waves of heat. it hurt.

_not enough._

she pressed her hand into her arm.

-

she was miserable.

she was so incredibly, wholly, utterly miserable.

when she was on her father’s estate, ignored by her mother, simultaneously scorned and groomed by her father.

when she was away from the capital, doing her father’s bidding like a good little lapdog, his obedient daughter.

with mai and ty lee. without them.

she was miserable.

memories wisped like hazy smoke, fluttering away in a midnight breeze. the royal garden. ember island. ba sing se.

the boiling rock.

spiraling up, up, into the stars, never to be seen again. she didn’t need anyone.

she was miserable.

-

they were talking about her.

she could feel it, searing her back like a cattle prod, flickering shadows like wildfire in the corners of the room.

they were nobodies, ants under her feet, insects and swine and beasts, and they were laughing at her. they were _mocking_ her. they…

they were going to betray her, sell her out, lie to her father, tell him she isn’t good enough, tell him she hadn’t worked hard enough, tell him she doesn’t deserve the title of fire lord. then he would beat her, dethrone her, exile her like he did zuko, and she would be nothing, like she always had been.

they were going to betray her.

just like her mother. just like zuko. just like mai and ty lee.

she gritted her teeth, meeting unstable eyes in the mirror, eyes flickering darkly beneath choppy bangs (her own choice, free of her father’s influence, he would never approve and her handmaidens would tell her father and he would —)

she wouldn’t let them.

-

she writhed, chained like livestock, watching the one person she was always supposed to be better than stand with a family he had found as hers had caught fire and drifted away in the wind.

her friends had not loved her, not like this, she knew. if they had, wouldn’t they have stayed?

she hadn’t been good enough. not for them, not for her father, not for herself.

like the dragon whose soul she had stolen, flames flicked out past her lips, a molten surge, hopelessness and loss and a starkly bitter loneliness settling into her bones and crawling out of her in a bright blue blaze.

and for the first time in years, she wept.

**Author's Note:**

> hey wow you made it to the end! well done folks
> 
> i finished this while watching survivor at midnight, there's a metaphor in there somewhere probably
> 
> comments and kudos always appreciated!!


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